5 Languages or less, which would you choose?

Be-you-tiful86 said:
English - It's the current lingua franca,most common language,understood by most people in the world. Plus I love it's sound

Spanish - It is also widely spoken in many parts of the world,plus it sounds passionate to me

German - I was born and raised here,still living in Germany and have a long family tree here. Plus Germany is still relatively stable in the economy and doing a lot of international business,plenty of exporting

Greek - Everything about Greece fascinates me. Their landscape,culture,food,wine,mythology,history. I had a chance to visit Athens last summer and fell in love with Greece even more.

Mandarin - Also plenty of business opportunities,plus it would be cool to be able to write all the signs. I have a great respect for those who have mastered it.
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That's really interesting! I would love to hear how English sounds to a someone whose first language isn't English :)
 
Spanish
English
Mandarin
For business purpose.

Then for fun:
Portuguese
Japanese
 
English
Spanish (I'd like to learn this, seems quite useful)
French (I did French in secondary school, don't use it, cant remember much)
German (some years ago I did a level 2 OCR in this and where I've had no occassion to use it, Its nearly all gone, yet I have class recordings of me doing a bang up job :()

Patois, would be useful, trying it now with my partner, I have things like salop poppy show (said like papishon)down pat now lol

I would choose something I was going to use, if it's not used, you lose it.
 
English (be born as a non native speaker who learns it), when you speak it already it makes you less apt to learn others, given its global prevelance

French - Its a language I am already pretty advanced in, but with all languages it requires deep immersion to master it.

German - ditto French scenario, took German in college and had a quick grasp of it very easily. Love the long words in German that are joined together such as

Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten (Overnight accommodation possibilities)

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften (Insurance companies legal representation)

Siebentausendzweihundertvierundfünfzig (7,254)

LOL, a long time ago some Germanic tribes decided hey lets put a bunch of individual words together and get to the point in one word, gotta love German

Italian - find it to be a very beautiful language. "Chi trova un'amico, trova un tesoro" - one who finds a friend finds a treasure.

Brazilian Portuguese - much different sounding than European Portuguese, plus I love reading about Afro-Brazilian culture and history.

Honorable mentions to the Scandinavian languages and Icelandic, love the landscape of Iceland, very ethereal and inspiring place of natural beauty.
 
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English - it's widely spoken

Italian - because then I can live in Italy :D

Latin - I've always wanted to learn that language

Egyptian Hieroglyphics - as soon as he said visual languages, I was all over that. LOL.

German - because I love the sound of that language (for some odd known reason) and it's actually on my To Do List to learn.

:smt023
 
1) English - If you're trying to get from point A to point B in a developed country, English is your best chance at a common language.

2) Spanish - Common, useful.

3) French - See reasons for Spanish.

4) Mandarin - See Spanish and French.

5) Icelandic - Wildly different from other languages, ergo, interesting and useful in its own way.
 
GQ Brotha said:
English (be born as a non native speaker who learns it), when you speak it already it makes you less apt to learn others, given its global prevelance

French - Its a language I am already pretty advanced in, but with all languages it requires deep immersion to master it.

German - ditto French scenario, took German in college and had a quick grasp of it very easily. Love the long words in German that are joined together such as

Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten (Overnight accommodation possibilities)

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften (Insurance companies legal representation)

Siebentausendzweihundertvierundfünfzig (7,254)

LOL, a long time ago some Germanic tribes decided hey lets put a bunch of individual words together and get to the point in one word, gotta love German

Italian - find it to be a very beautiful language. "Chi trova un'amico, trova un tesoro" - one who finds a friend finds a treasure.

Brazilian Portuguese - much different sounding than European Portuguese, plus I love reading about Afro-Brazilian culture and history.

Honorable mentions to the Scandinavian languages and Icelandic, love the landscape of Iceland, very ethereal and inspiring place of natural beauty.
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:smt043:smt043..the longest word in German

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetzesenturfsdebattierklubdiskussionsstandsberichterstattungsgeldantragsformular

..but it's a joke, this piece of paper doesn't exist
 
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christine dubois said:
:smt043:smt043..the longest word in German

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetzesenturfsdebattierklubdiskussionsstandsberichterstattungsgeldantragsformular

..but it's a joke, this piece of paper doesn't exist
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LOL. My approach as a native English speaker is to try and break up the long German words into its individual parts as quickly as possible and thus be able to pronounce it.
 
Hmm...too many to choose from...


English- it's widely known/used. I also like that there are so many words/phrases with many different usages & meanings, which makes it somewhat interesting IMO.


Spanish- it's practical and I like the way it sounds. I'm not fluent by any means (thanks to the 'use it or lose it' law of nature), but it's not a difficult to use or follow once you've got its rules down.


Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek (yeah, I know it's three languages, but they are all for the same purpose)- it would be awesome to be able to read the original bible and its early translations.


Body language/Facial expressions- useful for communication and for reading/understanding people.


Athabaskan- a Native American language that would be interesting to learn. Although I don't know yet what my NA heritage is, I've been told by some family members that it's Apache. Whatever it is, I'd like to learn the language.

There are many other languages I'd like to learn for different reasons, but I've reached my limit for the thread.
 
Bookworm616 said:
English - it's widely spoken

Italian - because then I can live in Italy :D

Latin - I've always wanted to learn that language

Egyptian Hieroglyphics - as soon as he said visual languages, I was all over that. LOL.

German - because I love the sound of that language (for some odd known reason) and it's actually on my To Do List to learn.

:smt023
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Strangely, Latin was one of the languages I chose in high school. We could do french, Indonesian...I did great in both, btw, but my parents were breaking up when I was 15 and I had 3 years in Latin, French and Indonesian and school gave me a choice, and my mum said Latin was a dead language and not useful, so I spent a year learning Latin.

Yay me and my duck you
 
wtarshi said:
Strangely, Latin was one of the languages I chose in high school. We could do french, Indonesian...I did great in both, btw, but my parents were breaking up when I was 15 and I had 3 years in Latin, French and Indonesian and school gave me a choice, and my mum said Latin was a dead language and not useful, so I spent a year learning Latin.

Yay me and my duck you
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You little rebel, you! LOL.

But Latin isn't totally dead. We still use it for species classifications. LOL. And also sayings like E Pluribus Unum, etc. :smt023
 
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